Discussion

Just a personal observation on the choice of demo video: Tweetdeck is obviously for Twitter power users, and while this ability to multi-stream is important for them, it has the potential to come across as really messy and convoluted for the masses. Since mass adoption is needed for any kind of traction, I would definitely take a look at crafting a different message when reaching out to them. Those three timelines, scrolling up and down, with no explanation of what we're looking at probably scares more people away than attract them. But hey, that's just my initial reaction :)

@ryanamurphy feels like they jumped the gun to get the product out the door. Without being able to find people or see what others are posted it's pretty bleak and I can't see it attracting your average joe. Great concept, poorly executed in its current iteration.

How cool would it have been if everyone who had signed up via product hunt had joined the same channel and we were having this conversation there?
Instead, I literally see nothing.
I would have clicked publish on a prewritten message that said "I just signed up to mastodon and found it on #producthunt". Product Hunt tag would have given me a place to see all the other hunters who just signed up.

This reminds me of Diaspora which made headlines in 2010. As Craigslist has proven, it's incredibly difficult to directly compete with those that have strong network effects (not that Twitter is nearly as awful as Craigslist).
Curious to hear your thoughts, @gargron!

@rrhoover As another commenter has mentioned this is using the same protocols (and thus network) as StatusNet (which is nowadays called GNU social). Haven't personally verified it as I know nobody who uses Diaspora but I heard that they're sort of compatible with it too.